Four Minutes
by CycloneT
Summary: Is something on your mind, Stella? I seem to have pissed you off somehow and I haven’t even had breakfast yet." Mac/Stella


TITLE: Four Minutes  
AUTHOR: Cyclone  
RATING: K  
KEYWORDS: Mac/Stella  
SPOILERS: none  
SUMMARY: "Is something on your mind, Stella? I seem to have pissed you off somehow and I haven't even had breakfast yet."

XxX

It figured that on a day when she was in a hurry to get to work she'd get caught in traffic. Stella swore when she realised that she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, honked the horn in frustration and instantly regretted it as her head pounded in protest.

"Son of a bitch,' she yelled, resisting the urge to sound the horn again. For a split second she considered turning on the siren, revving the engine, planting her foot and somehow barging her way through. But the part of her brain that wasn't consumed with a slow burning anger realised that the blaring noise would probably only create more chaos – not to mention the very real possibility of her head exploding from pain – and traffic was packed so tightly that there was really nowhere for her to go anyway.

"Son of a bitch," she said again, calmer this time, although inside she was still seething. She held onto the anger though, because it was her shield against other, more dangerous emotions that she didn't want to acknowledge.

She was going to kill him.

Once she made sure that he was okay, she was going to kill him as slowly and as painfully as she possibly could. She didn't know how she would do this yet, but she was a resourceful woman; she'd improvise. Just as soon as she made sure he was okay, he was a dead man.

XxX

By the time she got to work fifty minutes later Mac was already sitting behind his desk like he'd been there for hours. She, however, knew otherwise. She wasn't sure yet if it was a good thing or bad thing that she knew, and she was still trying to decide when he noticed her outside the glass doors and motioned her inside.

"Good morning," he said, making it a point to look at his watch. "You're in early."

"So are you," she replied, sitting in the seat opposite him. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Something like that," he agreed.

"I don't suppose anything, oh, I don't know, out of the ordinary happened on the way to work, did it?"

"Nothing worth mentioning, no."

"Nothing worth mentioning. You're determined to dig your own grave, aren't you?"

"Is something on your mind, Stella? I seem to have pissed you off somehow and I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She gave him one last chance. "Do you have anything you'd like to tell me?"

He was going to deny it, but one long look at her face told him that she already knew.

"It was nothing."

"Oh. Nothing. So glad we got that cleared up. Here I was thinking that it was _something_, but silly me, it was _nothing_."

"Stella," he began, but she cut him off at the knees.

"I guess I'm just over-reacting to a little thing like a police shooting. It's probably because I'm a woman and we're just not cut out for this kind of pressure. After all, it was nothing, right?"

"You know, I don't think I'm equipped to deal with sarcasm this early in the morning."

"Really? This is the tone you're going to take with me? You're just going to blow me off?"

"No, of course not. I don't mean to be flippant. But everyone is okay. _I'm_ okay."

"Well I'm not okay. Don't you get it? You were dead, Mac. For four minutes, I thought you were dead. And I come in here to make sure that you were okay, because you weren't answering your phone and I _had to know_, and you behave like a big jerk and now I'm sorry that I even bothered in the first place."

She didn't know what was happening; when she left her apartment she'd been as mad as hell; madder even, but now that she was sitting across from him and he was very obviously not dead, all she wanted to do was cry.

He was alive, and he didn't even know why she was so upset – no, angry, she was still angry, she really, really was, because he'd scared the hell out of her and he didn't seem care.

She got up and stormed toward the door. "If you ever, _ever_ do that to me again, Mac Taylor, you'd better start running, because not even a vest is going to save you. You understand?"

Mac nodded. "I get it. I'm sorry."

She'd heard the chaos over the scanner. It wasn't something that she did every day, but she did it often enough for people to categorise it as one of her little quirks. She'd been in the shower, about to rinse her hair, when the world stopped spinning.

Shots fired.  
Officer down.  
Mac's name.  
Then more chaos.

He'd been dead for four minutes before order was restored. Four minutes where she'd listened as countless shots echoed over the air and she couldn't decipher one voice from another. Four minutes of her heart beating so hard she thought it would explode in her chest. Four minutes of wanting to throw up, of praying and bargaining and denying, of hurting more than she thought was possible, before she'd heard his voice. Four minutes of hell, and he didn't get it at all.

"No, you don't. And that's the problem."

He waited until the door closed behind her. "I really think I'm beginning to," he told the empty room.


End file.
